


to cut your teeth on velvet

by Ladyboo



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Arranged Marriage, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mermaids, Separated Winchesters (Supernatural), Slow Burn, Smut, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-30 18:42:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17834045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladyboo/pseuds/Ladyboo
Summary: A hand in his and the prince had fireflies reflected in his eyes, the sharp gleam of his smile. Dean hated him for as much as he feared to love him, and there could be none to save him from the man who owned him.





	to cut your teeth on velvet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smolstiel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smolstiel/gifts).



> this is going to take a while to write, but! it's a gift for a dear darling, and i hope she enjoys! plenty of typos, have fun

Pearlized walls turned coral sunglow bright wherever the morning light touched, beams of the post dawn glow that flooded the room with the same gentle swell that carried it in every day. Wide tossed windows let in the salt rich breeze, ocean air adrift amid the alabaster curtains where they swayed within their arches and their ends pooled on the rose tinged sandstone floor. A tunic thrown over an arm of the ivory settee like it had been left with little care, shined leather boots kicked off and abandoned against the chest near the writing desk, a grand golden mirror stood off by the archway for the unlit dressing room and a luscious, silver threaded coverlet had been left a mess across the bed. 

The Crown Prince’s quarters were as sunbathed as ever, but the Crown Prince himself was nowhere in sight even at the early morning hour. 

As if he hadn’t even been there at all, or perhaps his presence in the room had simply been nocturnal and fleeting. Sheets gone cold as best as the humid air would allow, an empty plate from an adventure to the kitchens the night before, a typical scene if not for the absence of the Prince himself. And yet, that too seemed to be all too expected, or at least common, for there was a knock to the double doors before they came open and an exasperated sigh became the only living thing in the room. A great heaving sound, as if the chamberlain’s hopes had promptly been dashed when his morning duties had thus been going so well, the tray of juice and sweet bread and fish that he carried had no use without the Prince there to break his fast.

Most mornings were the same, an empty room save for the gentle brush of the sun, and it was a wonder the man bothered at all.

“By God, why must you- _ Dean, Your Highness!” _

His voice carried, followed a foot trail unseen out the open windows to the balcony unoccupied save its empty table set and harp. The far right side, onto the ledge where deft hands had pulled his body up upon the copper glazed roof and bare feet had made quick work of crossing. Quick strides gave little hassle to reach the ramparts further down, he had been practiced and silent during the changing of the guard in the pre-dawn to drop himself down to the soldiers path with its notched walls and arrow slits. A jog then, quick and quiet to the far right end where the castle wall stretched on the curve of the cliff and it had become a sprint, he had thrown himself from that lip at a full run into the glittering cove far below where soft hands had found his skin and bubble burst laughter had touched his ears. 

Water warm and encompassing like the only cradle he had ever really known, it had wrapped around his bones even as soft, cool hands slipped across his shoulders, his clothed hips. A flash of pearly shark teeth set into a full lipped smile, three sets of luminous eyes but he knew these girls, knew their comfort and their laughter. He broke the surface with a swell of ocean water, a glitter of it across his skin and his chest filled with seabreeze air, his head tipped back even as a tail curled across his thigh in a familiar touch. 

But that had been an hour ago at best, and the sun had broken from the cool hold the ocean offered to turn the surface molten, then pinkened and sweet before the clear, crystal turquoise remained, cheerful and warm. The Prince had taken to the sand some ways down, bare chested and his breeches still sopping, soon to be pale with salt water that clung from their trip into the ocean. Hands behind his head and his deep golden face upturned to the light, Dean watched the swell and sway of the ocean against the shore. It was better here than in that room, those walls, the water at his feet if he so chose and the melodic, gossiping chatter of mermaids where a few had gathered on the rock outcropping for their own socializing in the sun.

One of the girls giggled, heat shimmer on the breeze and he couldn’t help the way that he smiled, pushed himself up onto his elbows so he could find them in the water. 

“Something funny, Nerina?”

Half turned from him, but Dean knew her laughter just like he knew all of their voices. Dalis watched him over the shaking girls shoulder, a grin on her face that wrinkled her snubbed nose and scrunched her eyes. Dripping hair, she had only just left the water and he couldn’t see her tail from where she sat, but he wondered if the scales she had lost to that shark had grown back yet. He hoped they had, hoped she had gotten enough teeth to make up for her wounds, hoped it had been worth it. 

“The sound you made when you hit the water this morning, Princy.” Orabel with her sharp teeth and her ocean depth ink hair, he didn’t recognize the spined shells that held it all aloft. “You sounded like a freshly hatched clutchling, it was precious, really.”

Knees pulled up and his hands in the sand, he rolled to his feet with a fluid ease, in a walk even as his back arched wide to lift him to a stand. Another peel of laughter, Dalis this time while Nerina’s head tipped back until he could see the tip of her nose. Feet in the water far quicker than he had left it, it lapped at his ankles, his hips, got to his shoulders and he disappeared beneath the next cresting wave with a deep pulled breath. He should have shut his eyes, would have had to at one point in his life years ago, but the world beneath the surface was alive and sweet and he watched it with a familiar comfort in his chest even as his hands found the rock face and pulled. 

“Are you always this cruel to people who bring you fruit?”

“Did you?”

Excitable, hands clasped onto his shoulders, Dalis and Nerina pulling him out of the water entirely with a strength that betrayed their forms and onto the outcropping before he had even found his footing. Dalis’ scales had come back fine, glimmering wine color that trickled down her arms and her bare breasts, but they had come back with a luster along her waist and her hip where it had been nothing but raw, bleeding tissue. Brown hair nearly in his mouth, that was a little fiddler crab there, probably the thing Nerina hadn’t been able to get out herself and maybe the cause of the giggles. 

A knee on the rock, sun warm and seasalt slick and the two twisted and pulled at him until he lay on his back across it, the fat of someone's tail beneath his head and the slender curve just before the fin of another tossed across his abdomen. 

“Bring fruit? No, the kitchen didn’t have any last night.”

A whine from one of them, and Orabel’s teeth looked particularly sharp from this angle. Her lap then, charcoal scales beneath his head even though he couldn’t see them, dried ink coarse and sun warm. Had he not known any better, Dean would have thought she would eat him instead just for the lack of some berries or jam, but a single, webbed hand just patted at the side of his head instead. A little more force than was probably necessary, he could feel every slick  _ slap slap slap _ like a sharp echo, but it wasn't the first time he had been marked, wouldn’t be the last.

“Then yes, I am.”

“Ah, Orabel, I knew you cared.”

Hot water bubbling and murky, a snort from low in her chest and the gills along her ribs flared. Someone trailed cool fingers across his navel, a skitter of something else entirely from where one of the girls had dropped the crab on him and he swore. Had finally gotten it free then, worked it loose from Nerina’s hair only to loose it on his abdomen and he would have tried to sit up had he not known better by now. Because the little crab wobbled back and forth, unsure of where it was supposed to go, and his abdominal muscles jumped with every small pinch. The tail low across his legs was Dalis though, he knew the texture of her scales and the too smooth glide of another that had wound around his feet was Nerina, he couldn’t move them. 

Comfortable here and Orabel snuffed at him even as her fingers scooped through his wet hair, forced his head to tip. 

“Who cut you?”

He wanted to know where she’d gotten those shells, if she would share if he brought enough oranges for her to eat. He would even peel them for her, did every time after the incident of Nerina simply biting down into one only to cry, surely he could barter some fruit for a few shells. Dean let her pull him around though, another cool hand on his jaw while she thumbed at the barely scabbed cut along his shoulder from two days prior. Like they had smelled blood, like they had known, Orabel had found the wound far too easily and Dalis’ eyes were the pale color of fresh muddled mint and demanding where she hadn’t yet blinked. 

“It was just a training misha-”

“So you were sloppy.”

“Hey!”

Hard to talk then where her hand pushed his face, and he could see Nerina then with her hair crab free, Dalis with her spring of mahogany red curls where they had begun to dry. The two of them pulled a face at him even as they giggled, all sharp teeth and bright eyes and Dean couldn’t help the way he smiled. A faint wriggle beneath his head, Orabel readjusting as if his head had put too much pressure on the wide of her tail and Dean twisted. Caught his hands beneath himself on either side of her, but the motion brought him to nearly straddle her, her ashen face but a breath from his own and her bare breasts plump against his chest. 

“And here I thought I’d broken you of such forward behavior.”

A grin, loose and slow, and he reached up with a single hand to thumb her cheek and tuck a sleek strand of her hair behind one sharp, high pointed ear. He tipped sideways then, sat on the smooth rock surface without having landed on a single tail and held up his empty hands as if to show his surrender. 

“Nerina would eat me, you think I’m going to ju-”

_ “I _ would eat you.”

His laughter carried across the water, broke on the rocks and curled against the foam that crested the waves. Absolutely no social decorum, they talked all over him like he had never even started in the first place, like his words didn’t matter. Dean knew better, knew them, had known them since he was small and his childs feet splashed in the ocean while the mother he barely remembered held his hands. He knew these women like he should have known bell like laughter and sunpale golden curls, but the Queen had died too many years past for his memory to cling to her and Dean had tumbled into these women instead. With their shark teeth and their glossy, secondary eyelids that he’d watched flicker into place when they submerged themselves in the ocean salt, these women were his family, these women were his home. 

Careful fingers if only because he knew how she hated to have it pulled and Dean touched the tip of one to a rose edged shell spike. Ashen lips pressed full and she watched him with ink eyes, lid clicking as she blinked but Orabel made no move to stop him. So he traced it all the way through, found where she had woven her hair between the low curl spikes before slipknotting it through the hollowed center piece. They had all locked together, a speckled crown of them that held her ocean deep hair aloft in the kind of easy flow that the women of the court often did their best to manage, he loathed to disrupt the hold even though he wanted to cradle a shell in his palm. 

“What is this?”

A bubble burst hum and she reached up, found where his fingers had been and plucked the shell free with a quick twist. The low protest on his lips went unheeded, like she didn’t care, like it didn’t matter, but he knew her vanity and the symbolism of such things. It was like he couldn’t say no enough times though, couldn’t get her fingers to just leave it alone for all that it didn’t feel like he should even hold it, childish curiosity aside. But she dropped it in his palm and it fit there, cradled and cool from the ocean's embrace, and Dean cupped a hand around it just to keep it safe. 

“It’s a cut from a rose nautilus. The outer casing has been stripped, so it's just the spines.”

“Ora, I d-”

“Keep it. The only pretty things they give you around here is pearls, you need color.”

His smiled, touched, and he leaned into her side then, felt the way she pressed herself back against him. Sturdy beneath his fingers for all that it felt so delicate, little hollows had been pressed into each spine, dots that added to the artistry of such a simple thing as they climbed each spine. He could thread a chord through one, keep it close, a gift from his friend was a rare thing, and a wet strand of her hair hung loose, down to her shoulder where it coiled past his hip to the rock. 

“Thank you.”

She scoffed, all sharp teeth and large eyes, and Dean left the shell on his thighs, gave both hands to her hair. A particular intimacy that the girls had allowed him before, and the salt had left its mark in her inky tresses, a faint sheen like sea glitter that clung silvery to his fingers. Orabel didn’t stop him though, so Dean did his best to gently weave the hair back in with the rest, laced through the shell points until it stayed in place. She stayed still all the while, let him touch her where another would have felt her sharp teeth for such a slight. 

“There, all better now!”

Luminous eyes rolling, wide and heavy lashed he assumed purely for the aesthetic, it would always be so strange how something so ethereal could look so unimpressed. She put a hand to his chest then, elegant webbed fingers that he must have flinched from at some point in his life for all that he simply grinned at her now. Rocked with the way she shoved him back into Dalis, the girl giving a bit of a squawk in response like his warm human skin had offended her. 

“It’ll never hold up in a current.”

Slender arms around his waist, patches of glittering wine scales across the otherwise delicate insides of her wrist, smeared across her pale skin in no pattern he had ever understood. Dalis pressed against his back and her flesh was just as sun hot as Orabel’s where she invaded his space, seamed her bare chest to his spine like his culture allowed for that sort of thing. Dean just tipped his head though, gave her room to dig the point of her chin into his shoulder like she immediately did. Another huff and Orabel half turned her body from them, twisted at her hips so she could watch the western horizon instead which meant Nerina must have watched the east, viginent as ever. 

“He did his best Ora, it’s not  _ his _ fault he’s got clumsy fingers.”

“Dalis no, I thought we were  _ friends _ .”

He could practically feel her teeth when she grinned like that, could just barely see the same sharp cut that resembled the sharks she so loved to chase. And Orabel laughed, a bubbling sound like the others company only ever caused, head tipped aside and her shoulders shaking. It made her younger, a reminder that she was just as old as he for all that she and Nerina guarded him just as much as they did Dalis at times like this. 

Webbed fingers through the white gold of his hair and she forced his head to tip, craned his neck like she might take a bite from it.

“We a-”

“Dean.”

Like the cut of his sword through the pre-battle hush, Nerina’s voice was sharp, demanding like it wasn’t often. There were no giggles now, no hurried words and misplaced unfortunate little crabs put upon his person, as if the time for play had left them. It had indeed, for Dalis straightened against him, released him like she was always loath to do and put space between them where she often did her best to leech from his exotic warmth. 

“Your father.”

“ _ Just _ my father?”

Incredulous, he couldn’t help himself, turned to find his father were he stood and it certainly was just he. No guards accompanied him, no steward by his side and such was a strange thing, to see his father unaccompanied as such. It had been months since Dean had seen him in any private capacity, not since his return from Idera with blood finally washed from his skin by the ocean’s mist and his father had decided to personally see the proof of his safe return. Brady had oft called him bitter, and Dean had simply rolled his eyes, for his father was High King, and Dean had never expected any less of him. 

That same twisting feeling inside, settled somewhere between anxiety and the most fretful kind of hope, and it was with such a squirming in his belly that Dean clamoured to his feet. 

He made to dive from the rock into the hold of the ocean once more, but the water swelled to meet him with roiling bubbles beneath its surface. A hand held back to Dalis in thanks, it was with the touch of her fingertips to his that he stepped out onto the water that didn’t give beneath his weight. Sure footed as he ever was with a shield strapped to his arm and there was an unexpected power here, he felt just a touch like the King he would one day be as he strode forward.

Oceanstrider footsteps took him from the rocks where his girls had basked themselves to the shore where his father stood, and it took all he had not to pause. For John was a busy man, Crasamere at war with neighboring Idera over their resources, claim to the Vaimica Chain, and it was always a strange experience when his father had time for him. Draped in an emerald brocade cotehardie and he was without his sayon, neither his gloves nor the heavily jewelled girdle that Dean was so used to seeing. For the belt about his waist was just a glistering bronze, for his hands were bare for all that they were still ringed, the King looked as casual as he ever could without castle ground beneath his feet. 

“Father.”

“Will your friends miss you?”

Sand beneath his bare feet and it was hot, far hotter than the cool water had been, than his tide smoothed rock throne and his toes curled. A twist of his hips to find them and there they still sat though only Dalis watched him. Her guards watched the horizon on either side, protected their Princess as if the time for play had left them, and even with the distance between them he could feel the heavy weight of her somber expression. As if she knew something he didn’t, but he didn’t have the chance to ask, the bright haired mer tipping backwards into the water, the other two following immediately. 

“It would seem not.”

“Good. Walk with me.”

No room for argument, no chance to question a command that he would forever follow and John directed them away from the ocean and her ever loving embrace. Sand hot beneath his bare feet but Dean kept pace, breeches nearly dried from the sun's warmth. His father wore boots on the sand, fitted and polished and yet he strode through the sand just as quickly as Dean did up to where the sand turned thick with grass, where the dunes choked on the cusp of blooming life. 

Azazel always called the sands and the sea lifeless and Dean had never understood. 

“Where did you jump from this time?”

Warm tone, there was nothing scolding or angered about his tone, and instead, John watched him with just a curious expression. Hands clasped behind his back and a faint slope to his shoulders, his father looked the most relaxed that Dean would ever see him. The sunshine did him good, he needed more of it, and he wondered if the elder came to retrieve him personally just for a chance out of the palace. Flat ground beneath his feet, grass where there were grains of sand had previously clung and even that was hot, dry and bending under his weight as they walked. 

“The ramparts, southwestern most point.”

“The guard tower?”

“Shift change, sir, they were all in the yard.”

Sun hot on the top of his head and he wanted to tip his face into it, stand rooted into the merge where the sand had been overcome and bask in its warmth just for a moment longer. But that would leave his father, but John had made time for him when the man had so little of it and so Dean kept close instead. Watched as his father’s great shoulders rose with a chuckle, as he smiled with the color of pride that he always ached for. Amused, by what Dean had done and the things that he did that the chamberlain and his tutors had never managed to train out of him. 

Spirited, his father called it. 

Childish, Azazel would tut, shaking his head. 

But his father told him he acted like Mary, a sadness at the edges of his eyes and a wistful brush to his smile, and Dean would never let that be taken from him. 

“Could hear them hollering clear in my study, you caused quite the commotion. I’m impressed.”

A grin of his own to match his father's, and the grass gave way to cobblestone, traffic smoothed and the Oralin Coast had come alive with the rising sun. Voice ahead, he could hear the clamour of the smiths in the merchant quarter, the smell of fresh bread filling the air from further up the way. There were guards somewhere, he knew there would be, never was their King entirely unattended, the Crowned Prince kept under some form of guard if they could find him. The market would fall silent as they approached and, just as he had expected, a few bowed heads greeted him from those who saw them. John skirted the outside of the bustle of town though, followed along the winding exterior path leading back to the gates for the palace instead of simply cutting through the heart of town. 

Like he wanted to spend time with him, as if even pretending to be unrestrained beneath the glistering sun were exactly what he wanted. Dean could almost pretend then that this was all they needed, an idle breed of content in his bones, his fingers curled around a shell and his bare feet in the dirt. Pale gold and jewel crested though, the crown atop his father's head made such things impossible, duties could not be forgotten just for the sake of sunshine. There were things that mattered more than the kiss of the sun on his bare skin, an army answering to the broad of his sword just as he himself answered to their King, what sort of Prince was he if he forever ran? For he had gone to war for that crown, and would no doubt do so again here soon, if not with Idera once more than with Kerra and Akorra for one thing or another. 

He had gone to war for that crown and would one day wear it upon his head, and Dean knew because of it that John would never be just his father.

“Why did you come to get me?”

He loved his father, and if he were any younger he may have convinced himself that it was simply because John wanted to. Because John had missed him, because it had been some time since the two of them had simply been in another's company without advisors or valets to linger like secondary and tertiary shadows. Nothing was ever that simply though, even if Dean wished it were, for his father was a busy man with time that he could rarely call his own. The court made sure of that, the war made sure of that, and he wondered just what it was this time. Wondered just where he was being sent off to, and who he would have to kill in the name of a crown whos weight would one day bear down upon him. 

He loved his father, dearly, but Dean had always considered himself a realist. He knew just what was expected of him, a cool smile and a sword at his hip. He could have his sunshine and his innocent encounters with his friends in crystal ocean waters so long as he remembered his duties, head high and stiff shouldered with little care for the politics that would one day rule him just as they did his father. He was a Prince,  _ the _ Prince, the only heir that his father had and thus next in line for the throne once the man either passed on the crown or died, there were responsibilities there, there was blood to be spilt there. 

For every golden coin held its weights worth in dripping crimson, and he had seen the size of their treasury. 

“What,” A warm smile upon his bearded face, pleased where Dean rarely ever saw anything other than the furrows of stress. John smiled at him with the affection that Dean remembered from when he was younger and he wished, he wished. Broad shoulders clothed in a gold threaded, rich emerald brocade, his father had always been larger than life, taller than he and faster than he. All Dean had ever known, and he had wished when he was younger than the man would smile more, before he had learned better, before a sword had been fitted to his palm. “Am I not allowed to come collect my son when he decides to occupy his time with naked women?”

He almost felt guilty, bare feet on the loose stoned path as he walked beside his father, as if he doubted the man. But for all the sunshine that had kissed his skin and all the seafoam laughter that had laced through his lungs, life had never been quite so simple as the thought of a father fetching his wayward son. 

“You do as you please, when you can shake your shadow.”

A huff, a rolling chuckle of laughter that shook his great shoulders and John tipped his face toward the sky. As if he had missed the sun, golden warmth bringing forth the silver that had grown into his beard, at his temples. His father had grown old, or perhaps it was just stress, a weathering to his face that came with war and nearly sixteen years spent widowed. 

“Azazel means well, son. The man is simply doing his job. God knows we make it difficult for him.”

Silence upon them then, as comfortable as it ever was and as quiet if not for the crashing of the ocean that he could hear still. It called to him, sang in his blood and left an aching longing in his bones where his skin had gone dry and the last traces of sand had been swept from the bottoms of his feet. The salt on his skin remained as the only clinging reminder of the way the ocean had cradled him, and Dean would have to wash even that away soon, would need to bathe and dress for a day in court with his head held high and his crown laid across his temples. 

Court that he would be late to, court that his father would be late to, a scandal certainly that Dean alone had caused. 

“I know.”

Azazel had a job, and he did it well, gave his father someone to discuss politics and war when Dean couldn’t be present, taxes and local disputes and the possibility of expanding their kingdom. Azazel had a job just as Brady did, as did Meg, for he had to remind himself that his friends were far from that, and instead they were his valet, his tutor. Paid to listen to him just as they were paid to laugh, to smile, employed by means of their fathers steadfast position beside his own, no wrong done as they simply did as they were taught. 

A sigh caged at the back of his teeth and it felt so childish, the want that blossomed in his blood to just stand there, to see if his father would stay with him. So rarely did they get this, and lonely was a shade of breathing he had forgotten the flavor of until he was reminded of it all over again like this. Sunlight on his father's shoulders and the wisp of a memory of his mother's laughter, he knew the feel of it even if he couldn’t remember the sound, Dean wanted to hold onto this moment with both hands before it too decided to slip away. 

“I had ulterior motives in coming to collect you alone.”

He nearly laughed, could feel it kick up in his chest even though it went no further and he didn’t dare look. Eyes on the gold and cream gonfalon instead where they spilled down the sides of the castle walls, the very things he had used more than once to descend in the gentle dark of night into the trees below. There could be no escape now, and Dean watched as the golden suns woven wide into their faces rippled as the gonfalon swayed. 

“Where are you sending me now?”

“Ardglass.”

Shame for he stumbled, yet Dean couldn’t help himself and the way his feet tangled or the incredulous expression on his face. 

_ “We’re at war with Ethaliun?” _

“What? Dean, by God, why would yo-”

“You don’t send me places unless I’m to kill someone!” As if his father had any right to look so confused, and Dean watched as his face folded into a wild sort of exasperation. The most untamed he had seen him in years, if not his whole life, and all it had taken was Dean’s own horror at their pending invasion of the north. “What else am I to assume, other than that you expect me to cross the mountain choke with an army?”

John stopped walking then, or perhaps he himself had stopped, the two of them fixed in the path as if they were hapless peasants with nowhere to go. His father looked just as overwhelmed then as Dean felt,  _ stressed _ like the man surely had no right to be for all that he had been laughing moments prior. What a sight they must have made, his Royal Highness and the heir apparent, scarcely clothed and under adorned with their voices raised at one another. 

“We aren’t at war with Ethaliun, Dean-”

“I would certainly hope not, for I doubt that is a war I could win yo-”

“You’re being married!”

His chest had never felt so cold. Surely they were on solid land, grass spackled cobblestone where the path had slightly overgrown. No longer did the ocean hold him with that first plunge feel of ever cold against his skin, there was solid ground beneath his feet, he knew there was. He could see it, could feel it, cobblestones and grass turned hot by the sun and yet everything felt so cold, and yet his legs felt like they had abandoned him. 

No, it was nothing quite so simply, for things would never be.

Crown faintly oversized on a toddler who couldn’t manage to sit still, glimmering alabaster breeches and cotehardie for his mother had always loved him in white. His father's study had been warm, safe, quieter than the funeral had been with its mournful music and solemn speeches given by faces he hadn’t recognized, John had lifted him enough to set him on his desk, to put the two of them nearly at eye level. He remembered still the way his father had taken both of his hands in his, the look on his face when he had swore his son would marry for love like his mother had wanted. 

His father had abandoned him instead. 

“You promised.”

Twenty years old and yet Dean felt like a child, and surely he sounded just as small as he felt. Something curdled and sour in his belly, his trust certainly, that thing that he had carried within himself when this larger than life man had sent him to war. He wondered how it had taken this long, wondered why it had even come to this after all that he had done. Had he not given enough, followed well enough? He had done his best to be the perfect son, but there was a lack somewhere, surely, something had fallen apart between them and his father had forgotten. 

Perhaps he hadn’t even cared. 

“Dean, I know this isn’t what you expected, and this isn’t what your mother wanted. Understand that I haven’t come to this decision lightly, as the last thing I want to do is send you somewhere that I cannot reach you should you need me.” Wounded, his strong brow furrowed and his mouth pulled to a frown, as if the man thought  _ he _ had the right to be wounded. John watched him with such a heavy expression upon his face, as if it hurt him to have had come to this. Childish, vindictive, behavior far below him but by God, Dean hoped it had hurt. “But this is an order from your King.”

His  _ King _ , not his father. Not the man who had raised him, who had handed him his first sword and taught him how to hold his head high beneath the weight of his crown. For they were past that now, beyond that, this must have been that hollow ache he had felt when his mother had died for all that he was too young to remember. He would remember this though, the way he felt chilled despite the beat of sunlight upon his bare shoulders and how he couldn’t hear the ocean beyond them for the pounding of his heart in his ears. 

“When do I leave.”

John stared at him for a long moment, stared as if he thought he would find some sort of desperation that Dean couldn’t find it in himself to feel. 

“Three days time.”

 

-

 

Sun down, moon up, and the world seemed to pass at a crawl. His room had been stifling, he hadn’t been able to hear the ocean from so far up. The pull of it had been just enough that he had rolled from his bed, had crossed the castle wall on midnight silent feet to use those same gonfalon for his descent that had waved at him just hours prior. Their cream fabric had been cool, crisp beneath his hands just as the night had been nearly silent around him. 

And he had walked, booted feet on cobblestone that he knew for their earlier sun warmth with the swaying lantern lights of the taverns and the homes and businesses that filled the city to his right. The Oralin Coast had gone just as dark as she did every night, pockets of light sifted from between houses that he could barely see. Starlight on his skin, the pale glow of the moon that gave a soft shine to the grass that had choked the sand and pulled at the half forgotten path, there was a quiet here that did its best to soothe the ache around his heart. 

Seated in the sand, there would be evidence of his travel in the imprints that his boots left in the sand, in the sand that found its way past the knee high pull of his boots to collect in the feet of his breeches. Maybe he could carry it with him when he left, keep something safe hidden beneath his nails and between his toes like he had when he was a child. Wishful thinking, a want for things he couldn’t forever hold within his hands and Dean sighed, fingers curling into fists in the starlight cool sand. Black, black ocean waters stretching until she drowned the stars in her hungry depths and the crashing of moon tide waves where they smashed against the shore, this should have been a comfort, this should have been all he needed. 

The world was so quiet, sleepless night delicate where it surrounded him, and Dean could feel the thick burn of a scream in the base of his throat. It would blister there, it would scar, he was better than that and he had been raised better than that. And those things mattered, they did, he knew they did, etiquette that had been pressed into his bones in the absence of his mother’s fingers in his hair and the far curling spaces between when he would see his father's smile. 

Out ahead lay the rock outcropping that only that previous morning he had laid upon with some of his dearest friends, but there were no full silhouettes now, no flicking tails shined with water. For they slept somewhere deep beneath the surface just as he himself should have slept in his bed, but to be alone had always put such a bitter taste in his mouth. He truly felt it now for all that he had thought to know its flavor on the ship to and from Idera with her floral coasts and sundial towers. He should have slept, he should have left his chosen solitude to instead take his quiet in the privacy of his chambers, he should have done something more than sit on an empty beach that wouldn’t remember him once the winds pulled away his footprints. 

Instead he sat, and it was with a heavy heart that Dean let loose the sand between his fingers and hugged his thighs. He leaned until his chest pressed against the length of his breeches and he could rest his chin between the curve of his knees. As if the water held answers that it would never share, secrets he could never understand and he wanted things simpler, wanted laughter still warm in his lungs while his feet walked atop the bubbling surface of the oceans shifting embrace. He wanted his friends, wanted the sunshine that had beat warm upon his skin and the feeling of a shark toothed grin pressed to his shoulder from mer who had no concept of personal space. 

But the ocean held no answers, none that she cared to share, and Dean was left to stare out at crystal waters gone liquid obsidian in the absence of the sun. Like the setting warmth had taken all possibility of life with it, everything gone hushed and still. If he hadn’t known better he would have sworn nothing could live there, for surely nothing could survive in a world so cold and dark. And yet he knew their smiles, their laughter, the wide of their eyes and the way the sun looked on their sharp teeth. He knew  _ them _ for all that he had never known the nightfall cold of their ocean home, and a part of him hoped he never would. 

“Learn anything yet?”

Quizzical, just the perfect blend of earnest and ever teasing, at least she never changed. At least the ocean and its pitch dark waters never took her away, and instead, Joanna had always been beside him as a constant. And she sat now, he could hear the quiet rustle of her kirtle in the dark as she sank into the sand beside him like it was the only logical thing to do. Hip to hip, her feet were bare and he watched as her toes curled in the sand, as she leaned against him with a comforting weight that had been absent earlier while he trudged through the motions of his day before the court. 

He didn’t know what words to give her though, and he knew she only asked because she cared. And he knew her patience just as he knew her temper, but Dean didn’t know what to say to what felt like the only person with feet who would truly listen. So he didn’t, hugged his thighs a little tighter and shrugged, stared out at the rippling ocean like it would change the longer he looked. She let him, let him have his brooding silence and the gnawing pit in his belly that he didn’t know how to feed, and she didn’t shame him just the same as she never did. 

Betrayal tasted bitter, a strange taste that only got worse the longer it sat on his tongue. No food had chased it away, no drink had washed it down, and he hadn’t been able to stomach the thought of looking at his father. His appetite had fled him part way through their meal, and he had left more than half of a fish on his platter to grow cold as he left the room, distance between them that he had hoped would do something to calm him. 

John hadn’t tried to follow him, not with his feet nor with his words, and Dean didn’t know what he expected, didn’t know why that made everything ache so much worse. 

“Okay, back we go.”

Fingers curling in the neck of his journade and she tugged, familiar pressure from familiar hands that he had never had reason to fight nor question. The starry sky above him and the faint glow of lantern light behind them, Jo laid him out in the sand with just a single hand. Seamed shoulder to shoulder against one another and that was her hair against his cheek, loose blonde curls without the restraint of her sky toned charmeuse wimple and the braided copper mitre that held it fast to her head. It was well past time for him to be in bed then, he should have taken to his chambers a good while ago, for Joanna had finished her evening necessities and had retired herself only to find him missing when she had no doubt come to have a bout of late night gossip. 

He should have been abed, for his only land living friend should have been abed, and yet here they were. 

His sleeves pulled faintly as they always did at the shoulders, but Dean lifted an arm as she settled down just as he always did, somewhere for her to tuck close. Until they pressed closer still, personal space meant little with the only woman who could walk beside him and treated him as if they had shared a bathing tub when they were small. Jo curled against his side just as he had known she would and he could smell the perfume of her hair, musky and tart and nearly too sweet. It was everything he could do not to pull her tighter against him, tuck her face into his throat so he could press his to her hair and cry like he desperately wanted to do. 

And she knew because Jo always seemed to know just what he couldn’t find the words to say, her body turned a bit to the side and one of her arms across his chest to hold him like he held her. 

“How long has he known?”

That wasn’t what he wanted to ask, and he regretted the words the moment they left his lips. For such was an answer he wasn’t sure he cared to know but Dean knew better. Because he had asked, because Jo had never lied to him even when he had wished she would, because he didn’t know what he expected anymore. 

“Since the last invasion of Idera. The page delivered your letter of the successful sacking of Creacili to your father while he sat in delegation with an Emissary from the North. I only just learned of it myself today, but my mother has known since the following morning. She had to know, she’s to be your guard but she assumed he’d told you. He should have told you.” 

Petulance given against the breast of his cream journade and where he would have ruffled his fingers through her rarely exposed hair any other time, it was all he could do now to breathe. Past the familiar ice fingered fist of panic curling around his heart, he’d never felt such a feeling on home soil before and it was like he couldn’t get his chest to rise properly, like he couldn’t get his lungs to work. For his throat was sticky and bright with the dripping acidic burn that came before a spell, and he hadn’t thought the betrayal could feel any more bitter and jagged than it already had. 

His father had known for five months, nearly six, had sat on the decision to take away the only true choice he had ever been promised. He had done everything his father had ever asked of him, had followed every order and boarded every ship, had raided countries where he had spilled innocent blood upon sacred flowers without question. For the man had asked him to, and Dean had never questioned him or given pause, what reason had he had to ever doubt? His father knew best, he always had, and all Dean had really ever wanted to do was sit on the marble fountain in the marketplace that he could see from the palace and play his lute. 

Something had washed up on shore somewhere, something pained, something scared. 

“Shh, shh, it’s alright.”

Slender fingers along his side, her hand curling until she could worm closer and it took a moment. A moment to understand that that heaving, punched feeling in his chest was his breathing, that broken wet sound came from his throat, forced itself from his lips. He had started to cry like he had sworn he wouldn’t, gasping sobs bore from equal parts anger and hurt and Dean’s vision swam. For that sound was him, that animal he had thought to hear lived within his constricted chest and he brought both arms around Jo, clutched her to his chest and buried his face in her perfumed hair. 

Violent, gusting cries, pent up for longer than he cared to think and made that much worse by his father’s utter disregard, Jo brought both hands up then, one about his waist while the other buried in his white gold, sun bleached hair. And she let him cry like he shouldn’t have, Winchester men weren’t supposed to be reduced to infantilism like these uncontrollable tears had done to him, never once had he seen John cry. Yet Dean wept now like the child he hadn’t been in quite some time, yet he clung to his friend who could have been his sister where he hadn’t allowed himself anything other than quiet, carefully checked rage since that moment with his father on the faded stone path. 

Stange, how well he had thought he knew himself before his whole world was upended. 

“I’m here Dean, I’ve got you.”

Fingers in his hair, stroking along his back, her voice wobbled when she spoke. Steely as ever to the core but nearly delicate at the edges, gossamer as if the young woman had been so upset by his crying that she too had been brought to tears. Never had he wanted to make her cry, Joanna never deserved to be upset as such and anger felt strange now, buffered by hot tears and a tight pain in his throat. He didn’t know what he cried for, himself or for her, but Dean simply knew that he mourned for what he would now never have. 

Hot tears pressed into her hair, and it was like he blinked and the whole world shifted. 

Gone were the stars flickering above them, a curling warmth to the air instead and the sky had begun to lose some of its deep violet tinge. The barest hints of pink while he squinted, sprawled on his back with Jo’s weight slung across his front from where she still slept. The threat of a sunrise, they would have little time here yet as the sky started to slowly crest with orange, with red. A crimson stained sky morning that promised nothing but trouble and the loom of it bled into his bones. Head tipped up, Jonna’s curls pressed flat against his chest and he could see it beyond her, the bloom of the sun where it kissed the water and everything was red, the ocean turned bloody in its waking while the fat, glistering sun hung just on the horizon as if ready to burst. 

Nothing good could come from a sunrise such as this. 

“Jo.”

Her name spoken soft and yet his throat was thick, rough as if he had cried himself to sleep and it felt as if sand had found a home there when he swallowed, coarse and gritty. She stirred against his chest though, a low sound and a moment to press closer, familiar and soft. He felt as if he could cry again, and Dean tried to swallow instead, stared at the red, red sun where it finally began to heave itself from its watery grave. 

“We have to go back, Jo. We can’t stay.”

He wished the sand would just swallow him whole, fill up his lungs so he didn’t scream like he wanted to, cry. Her hands pushed against his chest and there was her sun darkened face, there were her warm brown eyes, and she stared at him for a moment before sitting, before climbing to her feet. He didn’t have time even to offer her a hand that she wouldn’t take, and instead he took hers, pulled to a stand when all he wanted was to stay like this forever. The others would come soon, surely if they stayed here in slowly warming sands then the other three would come from red stained waters not long after, he could forget, he could pretend. 

“I have sand in my dress.”

Grumbling, and Jo shook her fingers through her hair until her watched a small amount of sand fall from there. She took to the fabric that fell from her shoulders, and sure enough, there came more with just a few shakes. He could feel it on his own skin much in the same, and yet he loathed to shake it free, cast it aside when this sand may be all he had left to keep with him. She didn’t give him much of a choice, and maybe she knew, gave him a glance with warm eyes that always saw too much. 

Her hand took his before he could make the decision, and Jo twisted his arm until she could rest her hand in the crook of his elbow. Delicate like she wasn’t, dainty like he had never known her to truly be and yet how deceiving such a simple thing could be. For they seemed like something else, for their companionship gave them the air of something more, and Dean didn’t remember which one of them had started it, or when their charade had instead become a shield. Her sunny smile in exchange for his laughter, what a picture they must have made as they stumbled up the dunes to the faintly overgrown path. Bare footed, he wondered where her shoes were and she made him dance a little to keep ahold of her when she slipped, made him laugh at the sheer absurdity of the moment and the way she had given root to some happiness in his chest despite all the despair that dwelled there.  

Such a scandal they must have been, her hair uncovered and their clothes obviously slept in, oh surely the things that the guards would say. He nearly laughed again, and there must have been something to his face, there must have been  _ something _ , for Jo watched him with a toss of her head and a raised brow. The same peculiar expression she always gave him when he had done something particularly idiotic and strange, it was a pleasure to know he was in true form then. Perhaps he could hold this play then, maybe if he could convince others that all was well for long enough than he could convince himself of the same. 

A lie couldn’t be considered a lie if he believed it too.

“They’ll think you bed me.”

Amusement in her voice, as if he had just told her something grand, and Dean couldn’t help the way he snorted, laughed harder still by the way she looked at him. As if she didn’t know whether to be insulted or not, and such a thing was so achingly familiar that Dean could have cried all over again. There were the gonfalon though, heavy down the sides of the castle walls and so starkly visible where they swayed in the sunrise glow. Gleaming helmets in the lights, guards along the wall and at their posts where they hadn’t been the night before, more there than he had ever seen aside from when in ceremony and already his skin began to crawl. 

“Perish the thought.”

“As if you would be so lucky.”

“You say that as if I would ever have the care to.”

Her turn for laughter then, just as sun touched as her smile and the guards knew them then, drawn close enough that he could see the way a few of them marched across the wall, the way that another came out to greet them at the gate. 

“We should run away.”

_ “Dean _ .”

“You think I’m joking?”

A long suffering sigh and it was only for how well he knew her that he didn’t need to look to know that her head tipped back just so, that her eyes closed for a moment as they walked. As they neared the castle, closer ever still, as she trusted him to guide her with her vision gone for even just a moment. Dean wondered how he had ever been so lucky as to have her in his life where Orabel couldn’t follow. 

“Where would we even go?”

Part humoring, part curiosity, she had always been ever eager for an adventure that she had thus far been denied. He had known he could count on her, even if it was just for an ear, even if just for a hand on his arm to make him feel less like he could fly out of his skin. And it was tempting, something he had never even contemplated before, but he wondered himself if he joked with her now or not. Never had he disobeyed his father, never had he denied any of the man’s words, but he wanted to now. He wanted to take the only friend he had who could keep up and Dean wanted to run, run so far that his father wouldn’t be able to find him even if he didn’t quite know how just yet. 

“Kerra and Akora. Get passage in Aeston, nobody would even recognize us.”

The guard didn’t even look at them, acted like he didn’t hear them, but Dean knew better. Life had never been so simple, not with the expectations laid upon his shoulders and the things that were so often asked of him. 

“So we get to Kerra and Akora. Then what do we do?”

He had nearly forgotten her feet were bare, but she lifted the end of her kirtle to keep it from the mud and her feet were such delicate things. Deceptive, nothing about his friend had ever been delicate and Dean knew better even if others never would. Her other hand curled a little tighter against his forearm, and his gaze left her to instead slip to where horses stood before the stairs. They had visitors then, unembellished and simple apart from a saddle and the appropriate blanket, modest chests strapped to the rear of either side of the saddle as if they would hold all the travelers could possibly need. 

“We farm,” Distraction in his words, for upon closer inspection did he realize that he didn’t recognize the insignia stamped into the leather, and his head turned for just a moment to follow it. “Or we work in a tavern. I can play my lute and you can dance even though you swear you hate to.”

“I  _ do _ .”

“Liar.”

She scoffed, and Joanna turned her head so she didn’t have to face him, as if the thought were utterly unbearable. Quiet laughter held just beneath his breath as they passed through the open palace doors, through glittering gold framework and green tinted sea glass to walls of shimmering pearl and sandstone floors within. Their voices carried here, skated off of the walls to instead tangle in the air, and he could hear footsteps, a staff come to collect him in place of a father who couldn’t leave a meeting, perhaps an exasperated steward come to collect him for a meal he didn’t care to eat. 

Around the corner then quick, away from the throne room and deeper into the castle with Joanna cursing quietly between clenched teeth all the while. Nothing new then, a childish sort of game that he knew just as he knew these halls, and it was easy to navigate the two of them quickly to the drawing room, the music room, somewhere away from the main doors and just far enough from the main stairs that the servants wouldn’t try to collect him, wouldn’t tattle on the two of them like the children that they weren’t. 

“You’re impossible.”

Said like she meant it, said like he was supposed to care. Instead, Dean just smiled, bumped their shoulders together so their bodies swayed as they walked. Anything, anything to try and make himself forget, anything to do even just the palest part in calming the panic rapid tremble of his heart. For they could run, they could run far if only they got back out past the castle walls, into the market where he had never traversed. 

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

A figure from the library, draped in a dark, quilted cloak with the hood kept upon his head, and his footfalls were silent for all that his boots looked impossibly heavy. Fur lined, it shifted slow around him where he walked toward them, and the mitre that he wore held little luster, no gems to be found in an unpolished metal instead shaped with the harsh curving tips of antlers. Layered upon one another until they could weave heavy and jagged, such a crown was strange and unlike any he had ever seen before. He had never seen a man dressed as he, no cloak quite so heavy and no figure made quite so imposing, but the man made no noise where he walked, and Dean would have faltered had Joanna not kept pace without him. 

For his eyes were firewood hazel and seaglass blue, and Dean couldn’t help the way that his head turned to watch the other as he passed. And the man looked at him with something so wild and barely contained that he couldn’t even begin to fight the thrill that traveled the length of his spine. Not when the other watched him just the same, not when Dean felt horribly exposed despite the sharp curiosity that bloomed to life in his chest. 

And then the man was gone, around the corner with a castle attendant who struggled to keep pace, and his mouth was dry. 

“Who was that?”

“I believe that was your betrothed.”


End file.
